A humorous view of politics, religion, human behavior, and insights toward everyday happenings by a single guy living in downtown Chicago.

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Plastic Bags

Effective June 1st, it will be illegal for any store in China to supply plastic bags to their customers.

Frankly, I’m all for it.

Yesterday, I was picking up a prescription at Walgreens. My little pills were in a plastic bottle, the bottle was in a stapled paper bag, and the clerk asked if I wanted it in a bag.

“It’s already in one,” I started to say. But the clerk was just being accommodating, so I didn’t.

Yes, we use a ridiculous number of plastic bags. We buy an onion and it goes into a plastic produce bag. Then that bag goes into another plastic bag until we get it home. The two bags are used for fifteen minutes, tops, just to carry an onion.

God already gave the onion a pretty hefty covering in case you didn’t notice, yet we feel compelled to put it in a plastic bag. Same goes for a zucchini.

Those bags gather into big balls in our cabinets until we (usually) throw them all away.

I’m no saint. I don’t always have my canvas grocery bag with me, but I try. If I stop by the store on the way home and buy a can of tomatoes, it goes in my man-purse rather than a plastic bag. After all, I’ve always got my man-purse with me. (It’s a black canvas satchel that I bought for five bucks about ten years ago).

Once, I even bought a new canvas grocery bag at the grocery store. And, are you ready for this? The clerk quickly whisked it into a plastic bag.

Silly clerk.

If you don’t want to carry around a ten-year-old, five-dollar man-purse you can order Stella McCartney environmental designer bags here for $960. Really.

I have to doggie-sit Portia next week. And I will admit that those plastic bags do come in handy. When I'm presented with a big, honkin' steaming pile in the snow, I'm happy to have a plastic bag on hand.

They make biodegradable dog poo bags -- they decompose after about a month or so, at which time the poo should be far, far away from you and the dog. And they're the perfect size for scoopin' the poop. Just sayin'.